Are you bilingual? And I mean bilingual in the real, fluent sense, not in the "one year of high school Spanish" sense. If so, you'll want to check out a new multi-lingual option in the Language & Input menu in Android N. This might seem counterintuitive, but consider the advantages of your phone knowing which languages you know: when taking advantage of new API settings, apps like Search can show you content in multiple languages that are relevant to you, or skip the "translate to English" message when it knows you don't need it.

To add multiple languages in Android N, go to the Languages & Input part of the Settings menu, then tap "Language." You can add as many as you like, though the language of the device itself (the one displayed in Settings and everywhere else) is set to whichever one appears first. Users can re-arrange the list by tapping and dragging languages up and down.

Google Search and the various flavors of Google Chrome should already take advantage of this expanded function in Android N, and third-party apps can access this list and show users content in the relevant languages, though it will probably be a while before developers start to take advantage of this capability.

Comments

WORPspeed

Does this mean, Google Maps will be able to pronounce Streetnames and place names in the local tongue if it is among the bilingual languages?

I have my phone set to English, but I hate it when it pronounces Dutch streetnames in English.
It should know that I understand both Dutch and English and pronounce those names in their native tongue if available in the list of languages the user understands.

René Simonsen

I doubt it.. But if you are rooted and have xposed, you can change the language of individual apps. For example, I have my tablet in english, but Google Maps is in danish, so it speaks danish while I navigate.

WORPspeed

But I want it in English, with only the pronunciation of street/city names in Dutch (if they are Dutch cities and streets)

Cerberus_tm

Wait, it actually pronounces street names in Danish for you? The last time I set Maps to Dutch, it didn't pronounce street names at all (just directions like "go west 500m"). I used the Xposed module Per App Settings.

René Simonsen

Nah, no street names. But I still prefer it over English spoken street names.

Cerberus_tm

Oh, okay, thanks. At least I know, then. I prefer the weird English pronunciation of a street name over no pronunciation at all, when I'm cycling and navigating by headphones.

However, the only way to really make it doable would be to build in something similar to this for the TTS language settings. The idea that an app can detect the system language settings and use TTS languages accordingly seems smart at first. However, an app trying to invoke TTS can only invoke TTS languages that are actually installed on the device, and languages being added to the list of available system languages is no guarantee that the same languages are installed in TTS. Complicating matters even further is the fact that the TTS engine itself is user-settable (and many OEMs set their own TTS engines as the default instead of Google TTS at that). The closest a 3rd party app could do, as per that developer doc, is check if a language is available at all.

ssj4Gogeta

The API lets you set the engine to use. Whether or not a language is installed can be checked through the API as well to prompt the user to install it, and the app could fall back to the available language.
However, it would be nice if Google could warn when adding a system language that the TTS engine doesn't have that language and prompt the user to download it (there could be a required standard API to initiate a language download for the currently selected engine).
Merging the two settings may be another way, but that takes away some flexibility.

Cerberus_tm

I have my TTS set to Dutch, and Maps pronounces directions in Dutch; but it refuses to pronounce street names at all in Dutch (it says things like "turn left towards the west" instead of "turn left onto Baker Street". When set to English, it pronounces street names perfectly. I'm using the default TTS (Google) and it says Dutch is fully supported. It was the same way on my previous phone.

godutch

Or Google should support Dutch like it supports English because I set my device to English because Google now doesn't work in Dutch (I use it to change music whilst driving)

WORPspeed

I prefer English over Dutch on my phone, except when it comes to pronouncing Dutch names

Rapper_skull

It's also very annoying when you travel and the TTS tries to pronounce the street names in your language. They should know that in another country they speak another language.

WORPspeed

When I travel it doesn't bother me as much, because I have no idea how to pronounce it anyway.
So the bad pronunciation might actually be better, because at least it sounds like what I would call that foreign streetname. That way I can recognize it when I need it.
But when you're bilingual and know the actual pronunciation then it is just bad for me.

Good addition, but still falls short of what I think many bilingual users want. Many like me use English (US) as the system language, for many reasons, but don't want to use imperial system units for distance, temperature, etc. Android should do like Windows and use one setting for language and a different one for region. Right now I have to change units inside many apps, because they default to fahrenheit, miles, etc. Also, there are a few apps I don't want to use in English, for example those that are specific to services in my country (banks, food delivery, transport, etc) and the English version is a translation (which isn't necessarily perfect). Because not all app developers are thoughtful enough to allow for language change, some apps only display in the system language. There should be an option in the Android settings to override language on an app by app basis.

Google Now is a big offender in all these areas. For example, when I travel within my country, it shows me the exchange rate of USD:EUR, as if it thinks that I'm a US tourist. If my home and work addresses (both in my Google Account) are in a certain country, that means I either need the exchange rate every single day or I don't need it ever. Showing it only when traveling to another region of the same country is simply dumb.

One would think a company like Google, with so many international employees, would have thought solving these issues was important.

E

"For example, when I travel within my country, it shows me the exchange rate of USD:EUR, as if it thinks that I'm a US tourist."

Have you set up your home location? I get the correct currency eventhough I am using English (US), I do not get USD.

roberto.elena

Of course, my home and work address are in Spain and are saved in my Google Account, so any app like Maps for example can use them.
Also, all my credit cards in my account have billing addresses in Spain, so I can only access the Spanish version of Google Play, even if it allows me to read it in English.
Well, maybe they have changed this since the last time I travelled (I also sent feedback to Google a while back). Just to be clear, this doesn't happen when I commute to work or travel near home. It happens for example if I go to Madrid (350 km from my home, but in the same country). It's in cases like that Google Now shows me cards for tourist attractions, and it also shows a card for translation (English to Spanish), which I assume shouldn't appear anymore with Android N if I select both English and Spanish as languages I understand, and a card for currency exchange (USD to EUR).

Martin

I have the same problem. Not while I'm at home, but if I go to my parents in another city three hours away, Google Now starts showing the exchange rate and some tips on how to say 'good morning' in my parents' strange foreign language.

E

Got the same thing whenever I leave my city and goes anywhere else in this country. Haha :)

hipstrPanda

For the problem with imperial units, use MoreLangs. You will be able to create a custom system language, so you could have something like English (Spain). You will have English as system language, but all locale settings (date format, units, etc.) should be in your country's format.

roberto.elena

Thanks, very interesting suggestion.

Any known side effects of using that kind of app?

hipstrPanda

I haven't found any. I've been using the app myself for couple of years now to set the language to English (CA). The only thing is, if you're not rooted (the app works with systemless root, btw), you'll have to use ADB shell command in order to grant appropriate permissions (there are instructions in the app, under Help)

roberto.elena

Yeah, I saw that about ADB, but haven't tried it yet.

The problem is, after examining the app, I realized it won't serve my needs. One of the reasons I use English (US) in Android and on the web is because Google always launches new features and products in English, and sometimes they don't even work at first in other variants of English, like English (UK), which I would prefer. If I set the language to English (Spain) I will still have the same problem. I don't know why, probably because I'm ignorant or most of the time a PC user, I thought there was the possibility to have a English (US) or English (UK) as two possible values of the variable "language" and then US, UK, ES, etc. as values for the variable "locale". So what I really wanted was "US English (Spain)", but that doesn't exist in Android (unlike Windows).

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Nikolay Shamanovskiy

As a matter of fact, the main way google knows what your home country is, is by the billing address defined in your payment preferences: go payments.google.com, log in to the account, goto settings and edit your home address. The country you define will become your home country across all of google. The downside is that you will not have access to services and offers not available in the country u set as home. The upside is that google stuff will become more relevant.
PS
From my experience, may take up to a day for google to recognise the change you make to the homecountry.

Tarek

Yes sir, i have the exact same experience like you..

Total Faith

And still, there is not bilingual spelling correction! Why, Google?!

Miku is Best Vocaloid

SwiftKey does it! I've been using it for a few years now, I can seamlessly use Spanish and English with it.

Cerberus_tm

And Swype, which also has the best autocorrect, or so it seems to me. Except that it doesn't work as well in text boxes in the browser; does it work well for SwiftKey in browser text boxes?

Azzy

Wow now I'll be able to search in any of these languages I want, depending on my mood: Azerbaijani, Turkish, English, Spanish, Russian!!

The..Allowing Search Results In Multiple Languages..part more or less covers the last paragraph. Was there perhaps something else I wonder the author intended to include in this article. Some Other Goodies?

There are other possibilities, you just have to think about what they could be if we're talking about multiple languages at the same time.

David Prieto

I have noticed that, since I set several languages, some of my apps act up and show content in one language or another alternately. For example, the Google app sometimes shows stuff in Spanish (e.g. the Search bar reads "di OK Google" and Now shows items in Spanish) and other times in English (e.g. the Search bar reads "say OK Google" and Now shows items in English). Also, Chrome asks me over and over if I want to translate webpages in Spanish to English, even though I already said no.

So, I set 1. Slovak, 2. Czech, 3. US English. But my system changed to English :(

Roberto Virga

I think this just makes accessible from Android a setting that has been available for many years on the web. In my Google account page, I've always been able to specify multiple languages for search (I'm bilingual).

Miku is Best Vocaloid

This is nice. I am fully bilingual, I live in Mexico and I work in a Call Center taking English and Spanish calls. This is great, I want to avoid those fucking "Buscar sólo resultados en español" and "Search for English results only".